Review: Sennheiser AMBEO Max Sound Bar

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The Sennheiser AMBEO Max brings more realistic highs and lows, more dimension, and more nuanced detail than a sound bar has ever brought before. This Dolby Atmos capable sound bar captures the power and experience of a 5.1.4 surround sound experience (even deep bass without a subwoofer).

With 13 individual high-end drivers, the Sennheiser AMBEO Max 3D sound bar is truly compatible with Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and MPEG-H, capable of delivering an authentic surround experience. Each of the 13 drivers work as independent virtual speakers, recreating surround sound through reflection, putting you at the center of the action. With the Smart Control app, the sound can be tailored to perfectly complement the unique characteristics of your room and tweaked to your personal taste.

Want surround sound without running wires? With built-in Chromecast, Bluetooth, and HDMI connections, it’s always easy to connect to your favorite entertainment. When it comes to surround sound effect from a sound bar, the Sennheiser AMBEO Max stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Video Transcript

"Hi, everyone. It's Adam with World Wide Stereo. Today, I'm going to show you the Sennheiser AMBEO Sound Bar. This is the Sennheiser AMBEO Sound Bar and this is not your average sound bar. This thing is awesome.

Let's dig into it. Let me show you what's behind the grill here. So the AMBEO Sound Bar, as you can see, has 9 speakers upfront, 2 on the side, 2 on the top for a total of 13 speakers and this thing weighs 40 pounds. So the speakers on top will give you some really, really nice elevated sound as the speakers are projecting up into the air. This is going to be important if you're listening to a track or a movie that has Dolby Atmos encoding on it, or if you're just listening to music and you want to create a really nice, big, spacious sound.

In my testing for it, I did a lot of listening to Dolby Atmos-enabled tracks and I couldn't believe, I really did think that there were speakers above me and there was sound moving around front to back, left to right. It's amazing what this thing can do. This speaker or soundbar was designed to, kind of, replace a traditional wired system. Normally, you'd have three speakers up front, two speakers in the back, and for those Atmos or Elevation channels that are here, you'd have to wire speakers up into the ceiling.

So this is a great alternative to that. Let's say you have that living room that's opened up to the kitchen and there's really nowhere in the back to put speakers, or you have a ceiling that's 20 feet in the air, this can be a very, very great solution to give you, still give you a great experience for home theater and listening to music without having to run any wires at all. Being that it is 40 pounds, most people are probably going to set this up on their piece of furniture.

However, there is an optional wall mount for this. If you did want a wall mount, you can. It costs about $60 right now and that'll be able to wall-mount this and put it right underneath your TV for a nice, clean, professional look. So let's talk about some connectivity. On the back, you'll find three HDMI inputs and one output that now supports what's called eARC or enhanced Audio Return Channel. The enhanced part is to support all of those newer surround sound formats that are available from streaming services like Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD, all of those formats will now be supported by that audio return channel if your TV also has the eARC connection.

Of course, on the back, you'll find an optical input. You'll also find an analog input for, I don't know, a CD player or even your phone if you wanted to plug the headphone jack and come in directly to there. You could do that. Now, it also has a subwoofer pre-out, so you could connect your own powered subwoofer. The specifications of this will say that it goes down to about 30 Hertz and it does produce a lot of bass on its own.

I still say for a really great home theater experience you're going to want to have a powered subwoofer. So they give you a connection on the back to be able to do that. This is the supplied remote control in which you have your volume control, you have source collection on there, and you also have some different presets for, you know, movies or music, a late-night mode which, kind of, squashes down what's called the dynamic range so that things don't get so loud or so quiet.

It, kind of, stays at one nice volume there and doesn't have too much bass if you're worried about waking anybody up in the house. And, right underneath the power button here, you have the AMBEO button. Now, the AMBEO button is going to be there when you really want to engage these speakers and get that height and get that sound to sound like it's coming up above your head. That's what that's going to do for you. So you are going to want to calibrate this thing when you get into your room. Inside the box, you will find this microphone and you simply plug the microphone in to the mic input set in the jack, and then go into your setup and initiate your automatic setup.

And it will automatically calibrate all of these speakers to give you the best performance for your room. As far as wireless connectivity, you do have Bluetooth. It is Google Chromecast-enabled and it does have Wi-Fi. I will recommend, though, that you do connect this with an ethernet jack. If that's not possible, you do have Wi-Fi to get this thing set up on your network. Setting it up on your network will allow you to use the Sennheiser Smart Control App.

Now, inside that app, you're actually able to get in there, and I found this really, really important for listening to music. I've done a lot of listening to this and you're able to get in there and there's a four-channel or a four-band EQ that you can play around with things like the bass, the midrange, and the treble to make this thing really perform well to your personal liking. So the Sennheiser AMBEO is a great product. I listen to lots of different movie soundtracks on it.

I listen to music that is on, like concerts that I've listened to on Blu-ray and also just Bluetoothing music to it. And everything I played to it, I was very, very happy. This is probably one of the best soundbars that I've heard in a long time. Specifically at giving you that sense of surround sound without actually wiring your entire room. All in all, wiring your system if you can do it, that's still the best, but for this price point here, this is a $2,500 sound bar.

This performs really, really well and I don't think you'll be disappointed if you set it up in your room. This is the Sennheiser AMBEO Sound Bar. It will be available online at worldwidestereo.com or if you happen to be in the area, you can stop by our Ardmore or Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania showrooms. We offer free shipping, a 60-day return policy, and we're authorized dealers for everything that we sell here. If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comment sections below or please call or email us at any time.

Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. This is Adam with World Wide Stereo reminding you to listen to music every day. So long."

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